WHAT IS RUSSIA'S NUCLEAR CAPABILITY?

Red Star. June 23, 2007. By Anatoly Dokuchaev

You can find answer on the question raised in the title from the new volume "Nuclear Weapons Complex" of the Encyclopedia "Russia's Arms and Technologies. The XXI Century Encyclopedia". The Volume, containing 672 pages and published not long ago, discloses probably the most secret sphere of Russia's defense industry. The book is a result of laborious work performed by editors of the Publishing House "Arms and Technologies" and very competent experts of the Russian defense industry, military specialists, scientists, and historians. The Encyclopedia is being published under general supervision of Sergei Ivanov, the First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation. It is aimed at a wide audience of specialists in the sphere of armaments and military equipment, as well as military, political and business circles.

At the present time, the nuclear weapons complex of the Russian Federal Agency for Nuclear Energy includes organizations and enterprises which design, test, manufacture, disassemble and recycle nuclear munitions and nuclear components; ensure reliability and safety at all stages of the lifecycle; design nuclear power plants for military use, armaments, military and special equipment where nuclear technologies are used, and provide technical support for them. Enterprises perform their activities in cooperation with custodian forces, and all these institutions comprise the nuclear weapons complex of our country.

Note, the published work systematically covers not only the atomic industry, but also the ideology of its evolution — from design of nuclear munitions to protection of nuclear materials and information. The guides are: Sergei Ivanov, the First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, Sergei Kirienko, the Head of the Russian Federal Agency for Nuclear Energy, Ivan Kamenskikh, a Deputy Head of the Agency, Lev Ryabev, an Advisor to the Head of the Agency and the Director of RFNC — VNIIEF, and other specialists of the nuclear weapons complex who wrote articles about the most complicated and science-intensive sphere of the defense industry.

Authors of the book wrote that, according to the Presidential Decree on June 3, 2005, September 28 became the Day of Nuclear Industry Workers — the professional banner day of Russian atomists. On September 28, 1942, the USSR State Defense Committee issued a decree binding "the Academy of Sciences (acad. Ioffe) to renew works on study the feasibility of using atomic energy obtained via nuclear fission of uranium, and submit a report to the Committee on possibility of producing a uranium bomb or uranium fuel". When Americans used atomic bombs against Japan, Joseph Stalin signed a number of very important documents which transferred the Soviet atomic project into the State Problem Number 1. Works on this subject became of the highest priority, obtained unusual enormousness, and have been completed within several years with creation and test of nuclear weapons which, as we know, provided decades of peace for our planet.

The nuclear weapons complex is a base of Russia's military and political security. It provides the Homeland Armed Forces with nuclear munitions, which quantity and quality allow implementing the nuclear deterrent policy.

The published book provides a glimpse of high technologies and complicated research performed by enterprises and organizations of the nuclear weapons complex. "It is the first time when one volume covers more than 40 leading enterprises of the nuclear industry", — notes Nikolai Spassky, the General Director and Editor-in-Chief of the Publishing House "Arms and Technologies". — "Descriptions of these enterprises were grouped into 10 chapters by main directions of activities including: design and use of nuclear munitions; their manufacture, disassembling and tests; recycling of nuclear materials; nuclear energy; education and training of specialists; international collaboration; and others".

Obviously, the story begins with records about main works, achievements and capabilities of the Russian Federal Nuclear Center — All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics (RFNC — VNIIEF), which is one of world leaders in the nuclear sphere. It was the place where the first Soviet atomic bomb has been assembled; later it has been tested at the Semipalatinsk test site. The first serial tactical 30-kiloton bomb has been created in the Center in 1953. The book with extensive textual and illustrative materials describes achievements of VNIIEF: the first thermonuclear bomb, the most powerful experimental 100-megaton bomb, thermonuclear warheads for ballistic missiles with multiple reentry vehicles.

The value of the book would be significantly lower if its authors only listed the achievements. But the Volume covers in detail activities of VNIIEF in the sphere of nuclear weapons — from theoretical research and mathematical models to recycling technologies for munitions removed from the inventory. Specialists can find out more about studies on nuclear pumped continuous lasers, magnetic cumulation, photon and muon spectrometers.

Probably, it would be also interesting to know that, since the 1980th, RFNC — VNIIEF was commissioned to improve conventional weapons. And these works were described in the book: the tandem shaped-charge projectile for the anti-tank guided missile "Ataka", the projectile for the anti-tank guided missile "Khrizantema-S", and others.

Works of the Russian Federal Nuclear Center - All-Russian Research Institute of Technical Physics named after Ye. I. Zababakhin (RFNC — VNIITF) were described with similar full coverage. Specialists of this institute created nuclear and thermonuclear munitions of proprietary design. Those include warheads for ballistic missiles of: silo-based and railroad missile systems R-36 and R-23, strategic missile submarines of projects 667 and 941, strategic bombers Tu-95 and Tu-160, and numerous tactical missiles.

We can familiarize ourselves with works of the All-Russian Research Institute of Automation named after N. L. Dukhov, Research Institute of Measuring Systems named after Yu. Ye. Sedakov, Research Institute of Pulse Technology, Design Bureau of Vehicular Equipment. There were described facilities of enterprises where nuclear munitions are manufactured and disassembled.

From the moment of their establishment, scientific institutes, design bureaus, and manufacturing enterprises actively participated in solving problems for peace-time uses of nuclear energy. Because of this, the book covers not only military equipment, but also various technologies for dual-use and civil applications. The section "Nuclear power engineering" contains information about 9 Russian centers and their facilities. These include: the State Scientific Center of the Russian Federation "Troitsk Institute for Innovation and Fusion Research" (the fusion test reactor "Tokamak", the "Angara-5-1" facility, the "Mishen" facility, etc.); the State Scientific Center of the Russian Federation "Institute for Physics and Power Engineering named after A. I. Leypunsky" (nuclear power plants for spacecraft, the accelerator facility, etc.); the Research and Development Institute of Power Engineering named after N. A. Dollezhal (the reactors "AI" and "I", nuclear power plants for submarines, etc.); the Pilot Design Bureau of Machine-Building named after I. I. Afrikantov (industrial hydrogen reactors, power plants for naval ships, etc.).

No doubt, the chapter "Tests of nuclear munitions and test sites" is very interesting. Note that tests of nuclear munitions on test sites are necessary final stages in the design of nuclear weapons. The main share of nuclear tests (more than 82%) in the Soviet Union was conducted at two special test sites: the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan and the Northern Test Site on the archipelago Novaya Zemya. In total, 586 nuclear tests have been conducted at these test sites: 456 — at the Semipalatinsk Test Site, and 130 — at the Northern Test Site. There were also 129 nuclear tests conducted outside these official test sites. 10 tests in the atmosphere, upper atmosphere and space have been conducted at the missile test site Kapustin Yar near Volgograd. One 0.3-kiloton surface blast (February 2, 1956) has been conducted in a desert 150 km to the north-east from Aralsk, and one 40-kiloton blast in the atmosphere (September 14, 1954) — at the Totskoe test range during a special field training exercise which was the only taken place in the Soviet Union. Therefore, in total the Soviet Union has conducted 715 nuclear tests of 2079 ones conducted in the world. 124 explosions have been made for peaceful purposes. The reader can read out all these facts, as well as other interesting stuff, from the Volume "Nuclear Weapons Complex".

The book puts an emphasis on nuclear and radiation safety, ecology and, of course, on protection of nuclear materials. The book was published with the active support of Vneshtorgbank.

The further evolution of the nuclear weapons complex is governed by a nuclear industry development program approved by the President of the Russian Federation. When the State Arms Program for the period 2007—2012 was being drawn up, the Federal Agency for Nuclear Energy was going not only to preserve the nuclear capability of the country, but also to perform modernization of enterprises, improve their scientific, technological, experimental and computational facilities in order to create prospective types of munitions which would be an answer to scientific, technological and military challenges from other countries.

This means that Russia will continue to be a great country which is able to protect its sovereignty at all times.